1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of manufacturing an article carrying a relief image, receptor material for use therein and article obtained.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The continuously growing need for ensuring the circulation and diffusion of an ever-increasing enormous mass of information of all sorts explains the considerable advance which duplication techniques are undergoing at the present time.
One of the techniques most widespread today for reproducing documents in multiple copies consists in inking and pressing repeatedly against the materials to be printed, matrices on which relief patterns representing the documents to be reproduced have been previously shaped. The preparation of such matrices has heretofore been achieved mechanically, with the help of typewriters, or of other mechanical means capable of indenting a pressure-sensitive material. In spite of the progress made in the preparation of offset plates, relief printing plates are still mostly prepared either from molten metal or, more recently, from photopolymers. The latter technique for preparing printing surfaces, which consists in photographically forming a latent image in a photopolymerizable layer -- irradiating this layer with actinic light across a negative film, so as to provoke hardening of the irradiated parts -- then chemically developing this image -- eliminating the non-irradiated parts by means of a suitable solvent -- is particularly advantageous. Still, the necessity of having to effect this wet development process constitutes a drawback with regard to short-run duplication for office use as well as to printing plates for industrial use.